Bukut

Photographerdiana bagnoli

PrizeHonorable Mention

Companydiana bagnoli

City/Countryturin, Italy

Photo Dateaugust 2016

Entry Description

The Casamance is the southern and more animistic area of Senegal, here people have a strong faith in God and the spirits of nature.
Bukut it's a men's secret initiation.
All the men of the same tribe have to go into the forest to endure one month of rituals, physical tasks and survival techniques without absolutely any contact with civilization, women and uninitiated men. Four of them died and where buried secretly in the forest this year.
The event, which only happens once every 30 years in each tribe, is designed to turn boys, children and men into real men, they will return initiated at their own home, blessed and purified.
What happens in the holy forest it's sworn to secrecy and nobody, except initiated men, can't know about it.

About Photographer

Diana Bagnoli is an Italian freelance photographer.
She graduated first in Communication from Turin University and then in Photography from The GrisArt of Barcelona where she started working on Portrait and Social reportage.
In 2009 she won the first prize in the Reportage category and was awarded the Photographer of the Year at the FIOF Photography Awards. Since then, she has worked on editorials for international magazines such as Geo Germany and French, Marie Claire, Io Donna, Days Japan among many others.
She recently won the Grand-prize award in the 2017 Rangefinder’s Best Friends Contest, the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Award and the PDN award along with the Photo Annual 2016, in the category Personal Work with her series “Special Friendship”.
Her work has exhibited in prestigious galleries and during art fairs in Beijing, Barcelona, Bologna, Sicily, Turin, Sidney and North Carolina.